Five Purple Things Clint Claimed (and One That Was Already His)
by BonitaBreezy
Summary: Clint has a rule: if it's purple, it's fair game. The rest of the Avengers aren't really aware of that.


Bruce

"Hey, have any of you seen my purple shirt?" Bruce asked, poking his head in to the kitchen where Steve and Natasha were playing Flick Football at either ends of the table with Coulson reading his tablet between them. "I'm pretty sure I didn't Hulk out in it, and it's one of my favorites…"

"Bruce, that shirt is at least two sizes too big for you," Natasha informed him, lining up a shot that sailed neatly straight through Steve's finger goal-posts.

"It's comfortable," Bruce insisted. "Have you seen it, or not?"

"Sorry," Natasha shrugged, watching Steve with narrowed eyes and he lined up his folded paper football.

"I haven't either, sorry," he said distractedly.

"You said it was a purple shirt?" Phil asked, finally glancing up from his tablet. Bruce hadn't even been aware that he was listening, but that was one of those weird spy things Natasha, Clint, and Phil all did; making it seem like they weren't paying any attention when actually they were cataloguing every detail.

"Yeah. Have you seen it?" Phil looked thoughtful for a moment, his eyes trailing up to the ceiling, before shaking his head decisively. "No, I haven't. I'm sorry."

"Ah, well. Thanks. Not the first time I've lost something I really liked. Occupational hazard, you know." He tried to put the shirt out of his mind and headed down to Tony's lab to see if there was anything they could make explode to cheer himself up.

Hanging out with Tony managed to lighten his mood, as it often did, and by the time dinner rolled around, he'd pretty much forgotten about his shirt. Thor had made some stew that the palace cook used to make for him as a child (substituting rabbit for whatever meat it was that they'd used on Asgard), and the entire team save for Clint was gathered around the table talking and eating. It was all very cozy and domestic, and Bruce found himself smiling and truly happy for the first time in a long time.

"Do you not like the food, Son of Coul?" Thor asked, his brow furrowed in concern.

"Oh, no, I'm sure it's very good!" Phil said quickly. "But Clint and I are going to dinner as soon as he's ready, and I don't want to ruin my appetite."

"Ah yes! Spending time with your bond mate is something you must do. I understand!" Thor declared loudly.

"And we hardly ever get the time," Phil nodded amicably. "Of course, we'd have much more time if he'd actually get ready in a timely manner."

"Screw you, I've gotta make myself gorgeous," Clint snorted as he entered the kitchen, wearing black jeans and a purple button-up shirt that was a bit tight around his shoulders and biceps, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows to show off his ripped forearms. "Wouldn't want you trading in for a younger model."

"Job well done," Phil said, taking a moment to check Clint out, which had Tony gagging exaggeratedly. "Can we go now? Our reservations are in half an hour and if we miss them, it's up to you to figure out where we eat."

"Yes sir," Clint answered with a happy grin, offering his hand, which Phil took. They had already called their good byes and left when Bruce abruptly set his spoon down and said,

"Was Clint wearing my shirt?"

Natasha snorted in to her stew.

Pepper

Pepper let out a world weary sigh as she watched Tony grin conspiratorially and drag Bruce off to the lab, no doubt to make something dangerous that would create a need for a lot of damage control on the part of Phil and herself. It would be best if she just got her things together and went back to work before anything drastic happened. She grabbed her tablet from the kitchen counter, where she'd set it while she was eating, and tucked it into her purse. She thought that should probably text Phil, give him a heads-up about whatever it was that Tony was doing, but she couldn't find her phone. She frowned, upending it on the kitchen table to search through its contents, but still her phone was not to be found. She knew she'd tossed it in to her purse when she'd started eating, and now it was gone.

"JARVIS, can you locate my phone?" she asked, glancing at her watch. Things had been calm for the twenty minutes she'd been there, which meant it was only a matter of time before something went entirely insane. Put so many extraordinary people in one place and chaos always ensued. It was difficult to avoid, but she had discovered that if she was in and out in less than half an hour, she could usually avoid the worst of it.

"Your phone is on the coffee table in the living room, Miss Potts," JARVIS informed her.

"How did it get there?" she muttered, scooping her things back in to her purse. She hadn't even gone in to the living room today. She really didn't have time for this.

At first glance, she thought that the phone on the table wasn't actually hers, but when she picked it up, it opened to her password. Clearly, it was her phone, but the purple case that had been on it was missing. Maybe Tony had taken it to do some of his weird upgrades. It wasn't that big of a deal, but it was still annoying. She didn't love the case so much as to waste time searching for it, so she just tucked her phone into her purse, made a mental note to buy a new one, and headed out the door.

The next time she saw that case, it was on Clint's phone. He was sitting on the back of the couch next to Phil playing Temple Run and she would have recognized the long scrape on the side of that case anywhere. She didn't say anything, though. Clint was sort of an odd fellow, but he was married to Phil, so he couldn't be a bad guy. She figured she could let it go just that once. She'd already bought a new case, after all, and she did like it better. If it happened again, she'd have to address it, but for now, she was prepared to forget about it.

Thor

Thor frowned as he looked in to the kitchen cupboard at the conspicuously blank spot where his wildberry Pop-Tarts were supposed to be. He knew he had put them there earlier, with one of those stickers with his name on them that the Son of Coul had insisted on, were they to have a communal kitchen. He had been forbidden from buying more than one box at a time, and he had been saving the last little packet for a few days. He had truly been looking forward to eating them.

He pushed around a few other items on the shelf, past Bruce's Oreos and Natasha's tea, but his Pop-Tarts were nowhere to be found. Disappointed, Thor shut the cupboard and headed in to the living room. It was there where he found Natasha flipping through TV channels and Clint, who was finishing up the last of a packet of wildberry Pop-Tarts.

He did not know why Clint would take his food without his permission, unless he had done something to wrong him. He had tried to make amends to both him and the Son of Coul for Loki's transgressions, but both had refused to offer him any tasks that he could complete. They had assured him that he was not to blame and that they expected no recompense from him, but now here Clint was, eating his Pop-Tarts, as if there was no manner of respect or comradeship between them.

"Friend Clint, have I done something to offend you?" he asked.

"What?" Clint asked, as he popped the last corner in his mouth. "Nope, not offended at all. No worries, man. I've gotta hit the range, Nat, I'll talk to you later." He patted Thor amicably on the arm as passed, and Thor could only stare as he went.

"Perhaps you could explain to me," Thor said to Natasha, who just looked amused. "If he has no grudge against me, why does he eat my food?"

"He's not mad at you, Thor," Natasha explained. "Clint had a hard childhood, and he did certain things to survive. One of the ways that he established himself from others was by stealing things that were purple. He doesn't have to steal anymore, but it's just sort of ingrained in him now. To Clint, if it's purple, it's his. So it's nothing personal, but it's definitely something he should work on. I wouldn't worry about it."

Thor was displeased about the loss of his Pop-Tarts, but he felt much better knowing that it wasn't a personal slight against him. Still, maybe he had better avoid buying any Pop-Tarts with purple frosting in the future. He didn't know how patient he could continue to be if he were to keep losing the best food he had found on Midgard.

Steve

"Clint, I need all of my purple pens back," Steve yelled up to the air ducts. "Prismacolor pens are not cheap, and if you don't stop stealing purple things, I swear to god I am going to check you in to therapy!"

"If it's purple it's mine! You know the rules!" Clint yelled back, voice ringing out from the vents.

"Those are rules that you made up! You don't have automatic claim on everything purple, god damn it! Now bring back my pens or I will drag you out of those vents and strangle you!"

"YOU'LL NEVER CATCH ME ALIVE!" Clint yelled dramatically, and a quick scuffling noise was the only proof that he had left the vicinity.

After the thing with Thor's Pop-Tarts, word had quickly spread about Clint's purple fixation. When confronted about it, he had just shrugged his shoulders and refused to apologize for it. Phil had just sighed long-sufferingly and suggested they not get anything in purple anymore, because it was a habit that he hadn't been able to break Clint of in the fifteen years they'd known each other.

Steve sighed in exasperation and marched down to Tony's lab, punching his code in to the door and asking JARVIS to turn down the blasting music so that he could get Tony's attention.

"Please don't turn off my music," Tony called distractedly, his head bent over one of the gauntlets to the Iron Man suit.

"We need to do something about Clint. This is all going too far! He's taken my prismacolors!"

"Then buy some new ones. Hell, I'll buy you some new ones," Tony answered, swatting a Dummy, who was trying to offer him a screwdriver.

"That's not the point, Tony! He can't just take things and get away with it! He's not five!"

"Dummy, get away from me! You are an absolute travesty. I will set you on fire, I swear to god," Tony irritably took the screwdriver, which made Dummy beep happily and scurry away. "Steve, seriously. It's not that huge of a deal. So Clint's weird. We all have our things, just don't worry about it. Don't leave your purple markers lying around and he won't take them. It's not like he breaks in to our rooms to take things, just what we've left lying around. Who knows maybe he's secretly half bird and is collecting things so he can make a weird love nest for Coulson. Which, ugh, let me never imagine Barton and Coulson and sex ever again. Just let it go. I'd rather have him stealing purple things than doing that terrible zombie impression he had for the first six months."

Steve sighed deeply, remembering the gaunt, haunted face of a Clint who had thought his husband was dead and that it was his fault. The stealing was annoying, yes, but it was definitely better than the morose half-dead Hawkeye he used to see. So he could let it go. He could. Probably.

Darcy

Darcy neatly filled in the last line of a requisition form for a new tablet (her last one had met an untimely death when she'd tried using it to read a book while taking a bubble bath) and slid the sheet into her outbox. She glanced at her phone for the time, and decided she'd had quite enough of working on paperwork for now. She powered down her computer and rolled her chair the foot and a half towards the closed door her desk was sat in front of. She rapped on it twice before opening it.

"It's two-thirty, Boss Man. I'm going to go get some lunch. You wanna come?"

Coulson glanced up from where he was taking notes on a file spread out across his desk, his face completely dazed like he was trying to translate what she was saying. Finally, he blinked once and then nodded.

"Yes, that's probably a good idea. I haven't eaten since six this morning. And I could definitely use some more coffee." He began gathering the papers on his desk and tucking them back into the manila folder with "CLASSIFIED" stamped in bright red across the cover. As he was locking them in his desk drawer, Darcy went to her own desk so she could lock up her iPod, only to discover it had gone missing from its place next to her keyboard.

She'd had her iPod stolen from this shady organization once, and she'd be damned if she was going to let it happen again. Her eyes narrowed and she swept a look around the room, but she didn't see it immediately. That didn't mean it wasn't there, though.

"Have you seen my iPod?" Darcy asked tersely as Coulson locked his office door.

"I didn't take your iPod," Coulson said immediately. "Where did you last see it?"

"It was right here on my desk an hour ago!" Darcy explained impatiently. "Someone had to have grabbed it between then and now."

"Are you sure you haven't just misplaced it? What does it look like?"

"What does it-? It looks like an iPod, Coulson! You know, rectangular, circle dial on the bottom half, purple…"

Coulson cut her off with a weary sigh, bringing a hand up to massage his temples. It was the type of reaction he only ever had when dealing with either a particularly tiresome junior agent or when Clint had done something reckless. She narrowed her eyes, wondering which one it was. As it turned out, she didn't have to ask. Clint was strolling towards them with unmistakable earbuds decorated with yarn in varying shades of purple that Darcy had spent an entire Lord of the Rings marathon knotting to match her iPod, which was nestled snugly in Clint's hand.

Maybe her reaction was a bit irrational, but instead of saying anything about stealing or demanding that he give it back, she grabbed her taser from her desk drawer and let him have it. Clint dropped like a stone, clearly not expecting the attack, and Darcy snatched her iPod out of his hand, yanking harshly so that the earbuds would follow.

"Don't take things that don't belong to you!" she snapped, stepping over him and heading off down the hall. She heard a slightly whimpering sound, and then Coulson saying, "Don't expect any sympathy from me. I warned you it would get you in trouble one day. Wilkins, help him down to medical. I'm on my lunch break." He caught up to her stride and sent her a sideways grin, a look she could honestly say she'd never expected to see on Agent Coulson's face.

"So, where are we eating?"

+1. Phil

He didn't bat an eyelash when the vent above him slid open and his husband swung out, landing on his rump on Phil's desk, directly in front of him.

"I'm pretty busy, Clint, can it wait?" he asked, frowning at the file that Clint was now sitting on.

"Nope," Clint answered smugly. "I don't think it can. Do you want to know why?"

Phil sighed and set down his pen, knowing that it would be both easier, and faster, to just play Clint's game rather than fighting him.

"Why?" he asked, sitting back in his chair and raising an eyebrow. Clint tutted quietly, reaching out a hand and grabbing a hold of Phil's tie, pulling him forward until his face was hardly an inch from Clint' s.

"Because I noticed this morning that your purple is almost gone. Can't have that. Purple things are mine, so you have to be purple."

Before Phil could say something stupidly sweet like 'I'm always yours, purple or not' Clint yanked his tie enough so that their mouths were pressed together and kissed him hard and hot. Phil groaned slightly, his hands settling on Clint's splayed thighs and running over the material of his cargo pants. Clint's hands loosened his tie and before he knew it, the top few buttons of his shirt were undone and the fabric was pushed aside so that Clint could kiss his neck, just above the collarbone. His hands scrambled over Clint's thighs, looking for something on the smooth surface to grab on to when Clint scraped his teeth gently over the spot he'd been kissing and then began to suck on the skin.

Phil let out a soft groan when Clint pulled away with a soft kiss, working his way back up to Phil's mouth and pressing a bunch of quick, chaste kisses there while he buttoned Phil's shirt and re-did his tie. The mark wouldn't be seen, of course, but Phil could feel it like a pulse under his skin, and Clint looked satisfied anyway.

"Perfect," he said smugly, before getting to his feet and pulling himself back up in to the vents. Phil just sat there for a few minutes, letting himself catch his breath with his hand pressed against the forming mark under his shirt collar.

Clint had an awfully strange penchant for purple things, but sometimes, Phil really couldn't complain.


End file.
